Facebook has killed a search deal it had in place with Microsoft's Bing.
The move is unsurprising. In fact, your correspondent noted in early 2013 that the Mark Zuckerberg-run company was clearly shifting away from its dependence on the software giant when he unveiled Facebook's Graph Search product.
At the time, we asked …

Re: Does this article...

It's the brave new world! More whitespace, more pictures, less information. I know everything has to be tablet-centric these days, but surely a lot of readers browse The Register as I do: At work on a PC, when I should be doing something more productive!

Well, when I use Bing to search for that phrase, the page you mention is right at the top - first link.

You must be clicking the search button incorrectly.

More seriously, the problem is that Microsoft can't win. There will be lots of pages with that phrase on them (Google claims 8,500 results, Bing 30,000). If Microsoft don't put their own pages first, someone like you says "Bing is rubbish - they don't even index their own site". If they do put it first, someone else says "Bing is rubbish - they always favour their own site above the rest of the internet".

@DarrDarr -- Ok, I tried your silly experiment, but I did an apples to apples comparison and went to bing.com (as bing.com is really what's involved here). And lo and behold, it's the very first search result. So much for your brilliant analysis. Proof?

'fledgling behavioural network'

The last time i looked there were 10 pages of comments

On your New Paint Job and the MAJORITY want you to roll back this update.......are you going to listen and change back or are you just waiting for us to get tired of complaining.....like i'm doing now?

Re: Thank You

It's all in product branding...

Let's face it, Bing is not a good word to use when a process becomes so ubiquitous that it's name can be interchanged as a verb. Had they been smart, they would have used something like wank or caress, as in wanking or caressing the answers out of the cloud. Had they made something with a catchy name, and something with a bit of a blue flavor to it (we all know that sex sells, especially to us geeky types), things might have been a little different and people might have overlooked it's inferiority to Google. But no, they chose Bing. Bing is not only a horrible product but the name conjures up images either an injury or some horrible syndrome.

That being said, as I've stated before, MS should simply focus on its core product offerings and not waste monies trying to compete against google.